His dad “worked for people without money, always fighting the banks, the big government,” said Lashner. And it was those days when he worked with his dad that were the genesis of “Elizabeth Webster.” Lashner said he began writing the story as an adult book but it just was not working and it occurred to him that the story would be better suited as a children’s book. But when his late father, Melvin Lashner, who was also a lawyer, became ill, Lashner returned to the Philadelphia area to help him in his small law firm before heading to the famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop to nourish his ambition to write. He clerked with a federal judge in Chicago, worked for large law firms and as a federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
Lashner grew up in Abington, majored in economics in Swarthmore, and then spent a year in Europe and Israel before heading off to law school at New York University. My adult fiction had a very cynical undertone to it. You have to be careful not to be boring but these are impressionable years and you want to uplift. “Writing adult books is one thing and writing kids’ books, you’re always aware of your audience and it’s such an important time in their lives.
“It was one of the hardest things that I’ve done,” said Lashner. He had to learn the rules for children’s writing that don’t apply when writing for adults, he said. “I spent a lot of drafts getting it right,” said Lashner. This is the first children’s book by Lashner, a Bala Cynwyd resident who’s penned award-winning, adult legal thrillers, including the best seller and Edgar-nominated novel, “The Barkeep.” I feel my characters are better than me in many ways and I feel Elizabeth is special.” “I really feel a great deal of affection for her. “I loved her,” said Lashner, about his main character.
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